telegraph.co.uk — The debate about what counts as a living thing is fuelled today by the discovery of the first virus that is able to fall "ill" by being infected with another virus. the discovery of a giant virus that itself falls ill through infection by another virus seems to suggest they too are alive, highlighting how there is no definition of what is 'living'.
Aug 6, 2008 View in Crawl 4
fas2Aug 6, 2008
Small brain you got there.
ell0boAug 7, 2008
note theory. you can't say what's true or not, simply what's theorized. Once it's a law, then you can say what's true or not.
cutchyacokovAug 7, 2008
True. However the current enzyme/entry inhibitors have some rather nasty side-effects. Technology that employed a genetically engineered virus similar to sputnik could, in theory, target only the HIV cells and could produce far less side-effects in the patients. Also, another issue with the current enzyme/entry inhibitors is that they act as a selection pressure and cause the community of HIV virii within a person to evolve to minimize their effect. There are regiments that mitigate this slightly by varying the dose or going off the drugs for short periods. Adding a totally different sort of treatment to the mix would almost certainly further lengthen patients lives and perhaps could lead to a cure or an equilibrium that would allow patients to almost always live as long as they would otherwise. SemiSarcasdtic may have made the initial comment in jest but it is a very interesting idea none-the-less.
drewbe121212Aug 10, 2008
Yeah... I have always misspelled that word just to bring people like yourself out to nitpick!
thekappaAug 11, 2008
I can think of another virus that can become infected with other viruses- it's called Humanity.